While reading the book I asked myself in what way was Huck maturing. I found that with Jim he was maturing in mind of the opinion of whether "niggers" should be treated equally or not. I can tell that something is going on in his mind because of the scene with the men on the skiff on page 87. The two men are out looking for runaway slaves. When they asked Huck if there was anyone else on the raft he said there was only one. When asked if he was white or black he replied "white." It took Huck a while to think it over but in the end he saved Jim by replying that he was white. When the men were going to check it out anyway Huck made up a small pox story to scare them away. This here was a very important scene in Huck's maturation because it started to show how Huck wasn't completely sure on the whether to treat Jim as his equal or not. Just before he met the men on the skiff, Huck was thinking about turning Jim in, but Jim said "Dah you goes, the ole true Huck; the on'y true white genlem dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim.(page 87)" This caused him t o start questioning what the right thing to do would be.

Another scene similar to this one is when Huck tricks Jim. Huck and Jim get separated in the swamp and when Huck finally finds Jim again he is sleeping. Huck decides to play a trick on Jim by pretending he was sleeping on the raft the whole time. This makes Jim think that it was all just a dream that he tries to interpret. However, when Jim sees the leaves on the boat there in his dream he realizes that it wasn't a dream and that Huck fooled him. Jim tells him how "ashamed" he is (page 84). Huck says that it "took 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go humble and humble to a nigger."(page 84) In this scene Huck was looking down on Jim for being black, but in the end he was able to apologize for what he did. This showed how Huck was gradually coming closer to the acceptance of black people.